Computer technologies continue to advance at a rapid pace. Indeed, computers are used in almost all aspects of business, industry and academic endeavors. Improvements in computer technologies have been a force for bringing about great increases in business and industrial productivity. More and more homes are using computers as well.
There are many different kinds of computers in use today. The term “computing device” will be used herein to refer generally to any device that is capable of processing information to produce a desired result. Some examples of computing devices include personal computers, hand-held computers, personal digital assistants (PDAs), servers, mainframes, supercomputers, minicomputers, workstations, microcomputers, microcontrollers, and the like.
Application software is designed to use the capabilities of a computing device to help a user to perform various tasks. A piece of application software is sometimes referred to simply as an application. Examples of applications that are commonly used include word processors, Web browsers, database tools, graphics programs, and the like. Applications may be used to create electronic documents. Some examples of electronic documents include word-processed materials (e.g., letters, reports, etc.), spreadsheets, graphics, images, etc. Electronic documents are sometimes referred to simply as documents.
When printing a document, it is sometimes desirable to adjust the print settings that are used to print the document. A print setting is a variable that affects the appearance of at least some portion of a printed document. There are at least two different kinds of print settings, rendering print settings and non-rendering print settings. Some examples of rendering print settings include color (i.e., the amount of red, green, and blue), hue, saturation, intensity, brightness, contrast, etc. Some examples of non-rendering print settings include paper size, how many logical pages are printed on one physical page, whether both sides of the paper are used, etc.
Some print settings may be difficult for a computer user to adjust correctly. The user may not be familiar with the terminology that is used to describe some print settings. For example, some users may not be familiar with terminology such as saturation, hue, duplex, N-up, etc. Even if the user understands the terminology, it may be difficult for the user to visualize the effect of changing multiple print settings simultaneously. For example, it may be difficult to visualize the effect of changing the amount of red and changing the saturation simultaneously for a color document.
If the user is not able to easily adjust the print settings for a document, the user may resort to printing the document multiple times with different, randomly selected print settings. This is both frustrating and inefficient. The user may even give up on trying adjust the print setting(s), or on trying to print the document altogether.
In view of the foregoing, benefits may be realized by improved systems and methods for facilitating user adjustment of print settings. Some exemplary systems and methods for facilitating user adjustment of print settings are described herein.